to the moon and back
by astarisms
Summary: a collection of one-shots for natan week.
1. one

For natan week, day 1: wrath/happiness.

* * *

There is something inexplicably dangerous about him.

He is a storm. Powerful and unyielding and thunderous.

He wields his strength with frightening accuracy, his birthright as the most magnificent of the order of the Seraphim, before he'd fallen. They had taken his wings but they couldn't take his strength, and it ripples in every sinew of him.

He is adamantine in his control, and while the most ruthless of titles had been given to Zadkiel in Heaven, he was something else out here. He leads his followers with an iron fist, mistakes unforgiven and second chances nonexistent.

He rouses those loyal to him with a war cry, deafening and exhilarating. His very presence has always demanded attention and no one has ever been hard pressed to give it to him, as beautiful and horrible a thing it might've been.

He is a storm, breathtaking and deadly.

There is something inexplicably calming about her.

She is nirvana. Lively and sweet and peaceful.

She is always intrigued by something, animated and curious over the smallest of things. Her strength comes from within, the ability to stay inquisitive something she clutches like a vice while those around her lose their sense of wonder.

She smiles like the sun, charming in her own way. She has a warmth that even the most guarded of hearts is drawn to, and she is indiscriminate of whom she shines on. She wears her heart on her sleeve and gives her light to whoever she believes needs it.

She is reprieve. She is the breath of air after the storm has died down, the moments where the flurry is gone and life breathes its way back into the open, emerging from its shelter. She spreads her arms, light peeking through the clouds, everything is alright now.

She is nirvana, soothing and wholesome.

He is a wildfire. Unpredictable and devastating and all consuming.

He does things at a breakneck pace. No one ever saw his rebellion coming and if it had been up to him, the End of Days would've been just as quick on the uprise and over just as swiftly. He has eternity, but to him, eternity has always been finite.

He has felled entire empires in a night, thrown entire countries into chaos and laughed, watched as inferior life has crumbled around him with antipathy. He takes a perverse kind of joy in watching humanity prove him right.

He captivates anyone who gazes upon him with a kind of dark fascination, an indescribable pull to the macabre and the dangerous. He makes a compelling sight as he basks in others' ruin to hide his own, looking every bit the harbinger of the end that he is.

He is a wildfire, untamable and destructive.

She is rebirth. Beautiful and flowering and benevolent.

She is just as lovely on the outside as she is on the inside. Her eyes light up with her every intention, written across her face. She makes it so easy to read her, leaving herself open for ruination and trusting that whatever happened, she wouldn't fade.

She leaves pieces of her wherever she goes, with whoever she meets. Piece by piece she reduces herself to nothing, knowing that those she left her impression upon would grow with her memory and that, eventually, she would grow back, too.

She gives too much time, too much effort, too many smiles, to those least deserving. She reaches out to what's dead or dying and somehow she implants the need to rise again, to do better, to be better. If given the chance, she could cure the most rotten of hearts.

She is rebirth, radiant and ubiquitous.

He is wrath.

But she has changed him. Surely enough, the rage he harbors inside of him, the power that flows unchecked through his veins, it calms around her. The storm that he is settles into a drizzle, the wildfire that he is sizzles into embers, until everything that he is isn't.

There are times where his old behaviors consume him but always, she is there, bringing him back to the peace he's found with her.

He doesn't know how she does it but he doesn't want her to stop.

She is happiness.

But he has changed her. Surely enough, the altruism that spurs her on, the serenity that she so longs for, it dissipates around him. The nirvana she strives for whips into a frenzy, the rebirth she strives for dies on her fingertips, until everything that she is isn't.

There are times when her old behaviors consume her but always, he is there, bringing her back to the ground he's settled her on.

She doesn't know how he does it but she doesn't want him to leave.

They find a happy medium in each other, both clinging too tightly to let either finish their own self destruction — Lucifer, obliterating everything in his wake until he destroys himself and Natalie, giving away everything she is until there's nothing left of her to give.

They learn and grow from each other and it makes them stronger. He allows himself to feel something other than rage and she learns that sometimes taking care of herself is more important than taking care of others.

Give and take, push and pull.

Together, they come full circle.


	2. two

For natan week, day 2: fear/courage

* * *

For all his talk, his bravo and his boasting, he's an awful coward.

He's usually just good at hiding it.

There's a lot that goes into his facade, apathetic asshole that he pretends to be, and some days he's reminded just how exhausting it is to keep it up. His entire image is nothing save for an elaborate hoax but he'd rather relive every instance he's been maimed in excruciating detail than to let anyone see the cowering, doe-eyed brat that lurks underneath the illusionary brawn.

He buries his insecurities under false confidence and flawed ideologies. He tries not to think about what he would (not) have done if he hadn't amassed so many supporters in Heaven.

Sometimes, he wonders if he's really a leader or if he's become a follower, too, just like the rest of them. He doesn't know if he's acting off of his own beliefs or off of what they expect from him anymore. His motives have become jumbled over the years and he would claim he's too indifferent to pick them apart, but that's a lie.

(He's afraid.)

He grips his illusion so tightly sometimes he even deceives himself, but only sometimes. Inevitably, he has to face what he is and is not and stamp down his self loathing when he's in anyone's company save for his own.

After all, he's got a leader to play.

It's almost an effortless gig with humans. He's equal to if not worse than the dreaded monster under the bed, only he's one who will drag you down to hell for eternal suffering. He takes comfort in how easy it is to scare them. They make it all too easy to slide into his role, to play it up, to be the monster they claim he is.

He cringes away from the word internally, it reverberates throughout every deadened part of him, shaving off another piece of his soul. Does he even have one anymore, or does he just share the ones that rage inside of him, screaming and clawing and fighting for control of his body? Is it even his body anymore, or is it theirs?

Hell is his own eternal suffering, his punishment for being the very thing he fears the most. Despite what humans think, he's no more the lord of hell than he is the lord of chocolate chunk brownies, but a vessel for it, hollowed out and filled with all those as vile as he is.

But he lets them think what they want. It's easier that way, and it's handy in keeping them away from him. After all, his hatred for them is what got him here in the first place, wasn't it? Even now, that was something he maintained, something he could confidently say was his own.

Natalie was an exception.

She was the exception.

To everything.

She was everything he wasn't and couldn't be. She didn't cower before him, or before anything else. He had always thought that courage was the absence of fear, but she proved him wrong.

She had fears. She just wasn't afraid to face them.

"It's like, growth or something," she had told him once, and left it at that, smiling and laughing all the way. He hadn't really gotten it then, just staring at her as if she had a screw loose. The more time he spent with her, though, bound to her by a contract and maybe a little bit of something else, the more he understood.

There was nothing brave about facing something you weren't afraid of. Bravery was her, standing unwavering before Hell even as it fed off of the bitter tang of her fear, ready to pull him back into his body at any cost. Bravery was her, staring into the face of Death himself with a shuddering breath, and jumping to reassure him that things would be alright.

Bravery is her, opening her arms and heart to the Devil and bracing for rejection.

Except there isn't one because he's still a coward and even though he knows turning her away would be what's best for her, he knows it won't be what's best for him. He's terrified of what rejecting her would mean.

He's had a taste of what it means to be loved — genuinely, wholly, irrevocably — and he can't bring himself to end it here. He doesn't know what will become of him, wretched beast that he is, if he did otherwise.

Even this short taste of something other than suffocating loneliness, than crippling self loathing, has made him feel alive in a way he hasn't in a long, long time. It's selfish and it's cowardly but that's who he is, that's who he's always been.

It's not until they're laying together, under the stars in some cheesy teenage romance-esque fashion that he doesn't actually hate as much as he claims to when they first climb onto her roof, that he realizes his newfound definition of courage isn't complete.

"You know," Natalie starts, and he would have begrudged the loss of their peaceful silence if her voice wasn't so soft, like she's got a secret to impart to him. He can't quash his own curiosity. There's a pause and he gets impatient, turning to look over at her.

She's staring up at the sky, and there's a thoughtfulness on her face that's uncharacteristic. She's not ever one to think about what she's going to say. She speaks first and deals with the consequences later, so watching her turn her words over in her head is a strange experience in and of itself.

"Well? Spit it out, kid." An ironic smile turns up her lips because he can hardly call her that anymore without slighting himself, not with the things they've done and do, but that's an argument for another day.

"I was just thinking…"

"Don't hurt yourself." She laughs and hits his arm, before reaching down and fumbling until she finds his fingers in the dark. She twines them together and he lets her.

"Jerk. I was just thinking about — and don't run away now — love." She tightens her grip on his hand and he narrows his eyes at her, and she's still not looking at him but she laughs again anyways because she knows him well enough to sense his glare.

"And?"

"And… I think loving someone is the bravest thing anyone can do, you know." There's something in her tone that has him tensing. He's never talked to her about his cowardice, but there's something there that suggests she knows. It wouldn't surprise him if she did, she's always been able to read him better than anyone else, but it's disconcerting nonetheless.

He stays silent and she finally turns to face him.

"Don't you think?" she asks, softly. "You have to open up your heart and that's scary. You're, like, giving someone a piece of you. It's like… I dunno. Maybe all I'm trying to say is that what… what we have isn't for the weak hearted."

She smiles brilliantly at him and her eyes are bright in the moonlight and he is frozen. He can only watch as she raises up onto her elbows to look down at him.

"It's not for cowards," she says, and if he'd thought the topic a strange coincidence before, all doubts were wiped away at her vehemence. She leans down and brushes her lips against his, and it feels like she's breathing life into him.

She pulls away and her smile is still in place, but she doesn't say anything else and she doesn't prompt him for a response, either, which he's grateful for. She lays back down beside him, resuming her stargazing.

And if she notices his grip on her hand tighten, she doesn't say anything.


	3. three

For natan week, day 3: punishment/reward.

* * *

Lucifer Morningstar went by many names. Satan, The Adversary, The Prince of Darkness, The King of Lies, and so on and so forth. He was the Devil. The thought of him alone was enough to strike fear into human hearts.

Well. Most human hearts.

Natalie was an exception. He wasn't sure where this kid got off, but after the first week or so with him, she had gotten uncomfortably comfortable around him. She had no problem sassing him or ordering him around, her knowledge of their contract giving her an unwelcome confidence.

She especially liked to use her newfound confidence to punish him if he was being bad. Bad. Him. The Devil.

The kid really needed to get her shit on straight because what was she expecting from him? He was the very definition of the fucking word.

She tried a variety of things from house arrest to doing her chores and homework, but by and large her favorite punishment was dragging him to church with her and her dad on Sundays.

She saved that for when he was exceptionally bad, but the experience was horrible enough to traumatize him. He couldn't believe the audacity, but he was too nauseous and too adverse to the idea of being dragged back that he didn't follow through with the temptation to burn her house to the ground.

After he'd recovered, all he'd done was yell at her, which she took a lot better that time than she had the first time he'd raised his voice at her. And by a lot better, he meant she smiled indulgently at him, stifling her laughter in her sleeve.

He swore on that day that the moment this contract was up, he'd kill her himself.

Of course, things had a funny way of never working out as he wanted them to. Several months into their contract, she was practically attached to him at the hip, and for all his griping he never actually attempted to push her away.

She sat on her bed, her homework pushed to the side as she leaned over her knees to look at him closer.

"Hey, dude?"

He grunted in acknowledgement. Natalie only narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, before she grinned.

"Whatever you're thinking about doing, don't."

"Wha — I'm just fucking sitting here!"

"You stopped actually reading that book like ten minutes ago. You're plotting something."

"When did you start paying attention to shit like that, kid? I'm not plotting anything."

She eyed him for a moment, before pulling her chemistry book back into her lap and raising up.

"If you say so. Just remember, church is tomorrow! Wouldn't it be fun if you could go?"

"Are you threatening me?"

"Of course not!" There was a gleam in her eyes that made him narrow his own. "I just said it'd be fun if you could go."

"You can't keep pulling this bullshit. Even if I was doing something, I—"

Natalie started giggling, beaming at him, and he glared even more fiercely.

"Okay, okay, dude, just calm down. It was just a joke. You're so easy to get riled up."

He huffed, disinclined to continue this conversation with her, and turned his attention back to his book.

"You know what would be better than church, though?"

He didn't even grunt this time, refusing to give her the idea that he was still listening, hunched rebelliously over his book. Natalie only tapped the end of her pen against her lip, knowing that he was paying attention despite how he pretended not to.

"That bakery on the corner by the mall. Those brownies could really hit the spot, don't you think?"

There was a note to her voice that he didn't like, and when he finally looked up at her, she was all but smirking at him. Smirking! She shrugged slightly, looking back down at her book.

"I guess it all depends on you, though. What do you wanna do, Lucifer?"

It wasn't the first time she had pulled something like this, and while he was never averse to the idea of brownies that Natalie played no hand in making, something always sat wrong with him.

In all the months he'd spent with her, he could never quite place his finger on it, but there was a pattern to her trying to get him to do what she wanted, rewarding him when he did something she liked and —

He stopped, a memory flashing back to a couple of months ago when she'd been mumbling her notes aloud, trying to study for her psychology test or some shit.

She was fucking training him. Conditioning him to be a "good boy" like he was a fucking dog. Like he was her own personal Pavlovian experiment.

Church when he was bad, sweets when he was good. She was playing with him. The Devil.

But… he couldn't turn down good brownies.

He'd play her game, for now. Only until it stopped benefitting him. And he would not let himself be conditioned.

"Brownies sound good," he said, narrowing his eyes at her in an unspoken challenge. She only smiled innocently at him.

"Great! We can get some when I finish this homework. My treat."

 _Yeah,_ he thought. _It had better be._


	4. four

For natan week, day 4: recognize/forget.

* * *

Her dreams haunt her when she's awake.

She has no memory of the tall demon that settles into her bean bag chair at night, when she curls into a ball on her bed and presses her back against the wall and tries to watch him until exhaustion pulls her under.

Strangely enough, he never touches her at night. At least, not in real life.

Her dreams are another matter.

She doesn't remember him like he claims she should. She doesn't entirely believe him either, despite Lola and the doctor — the horsemen, she shudders — seeming to back up his story.

After all, how could she be friends with the Devil? She would like to believe she's smarter than that, though Lucifer would be quick to reassure her that that wasn't the case.

He'd take one look at her expression and mumble something resembling an apology under his breath. She didn't know why his regret made her lungs constrict.

But for all her resistance, every time she goes to sleep, she dreams. Vivid dreams that she has an inkling could be her so-called lost memories, but she'll never know because when she wakes they slip between her fingers like sand, fuzzy and impermanent.

There are remnants of them, though.

Sometimes when she wakes up she feels warm and light, like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders, and when she first sees him in the morning there's an overwhelming sense of familiarity.

For a second, his eyes will light up, seeing something in hers that wasn't there before, and he'll straighten his back. Immediately, she will look away from him, the warmth oozing out of her. She imagines it resembles what losing a lot of blood at once feels like, though she doesn't know how she would know that.

She pretends she doesn't see the hope drain out of him just as quickly and that it doesn't rattle her.

Sometimes there are nightmares and she'll jerk awake, sweating and panting and there's pain, in her head, on her back, on her stomach, on her arm. Sometimes there isn't any physical indication but it doesn't matter because even when there is, she can't _remember._

She can't remember where the scars on her back come from, or how she got the twin set that indicates something skewered her like a kabob and she tears up in frustration. The memories are _there_ but they're _not_ , they're just out of her reach.

On these nights the mattress will sink with his weight, where he'll sit on the edge as far from her as possible and offer to tell her a story. She accepts tentatively, if only to distract her from her own inner turmoil.

The stories he tells are not happy ones, they're dark and end in injury, but they're captivating nonetheless. When she lays back down she can't help but get the feeling that they're more or less the origins of the puckered flesh that litters her body and they give her some distinct form of closure.

It always takes her longer to fall back asleep these nights, and a few times she catches him back on her bean bag chair, hunched over with his head in his heads. His horns are out and they're bleeding a glowing violet, and her stomach rolls violently, because for all that she doesn't know about him, she's learned what those mean.

She turns over then and wills herself to sleep, if only to keep the guilt — for what? she wonders, not for the first time and never for the last — from consuming her.

And sometimes… sometimes when she wakes up it's with a different kind of warmth. It's the kind of heat her comforter can't replicate, and she doesn't think she would have ever guessed what it was if it wasn't for the accompanying sensation of hands.

She lays in bed in the morning with the hyperrealistic feeling of fingers threaded through hers. Of hands on her waist, keeping her from falling. Of hands beneath her, pulling her into a hard chest. Of hands on her face, rough and calloused.

She feels whole and full for those brief moments when she wakes up until that, too, fades, leaving her empty and cold and with a man she doesn't remember but is beginning to think she should.

In quiet moments, her eyes will be drawn to his hands, wondering if they would replicate the phantom touch that lingers long after the dreams themselves disappear. She begins to daydream, wondering if the hands in her dreams were the touch of a friend or the touch of a lover.

Her face goes red and she snaps herself out of her delusions. How could she be fantasizing about the _Devil_ in that kind of context? What would Michael, her guardian angel, say to her if he knew?

Shame fills her, heavy and unstill, but it's not enough to keep her from sensing the eyes on her. It's not enough to keep her from looking up and meeting eyes that dart away in an instant, but not before she gets a glimpse of some deep-rooted agony.

It knocks the breath out of her every time she sees it. At first, she'd believed his darker emotions were some kind of a show to tug on her heartstrings, to get in her head and bring about her ultimate destruction, but the more time she (unwillingly) spends with him the more she begins to think that's not the case.

She'd thought him a very good actor, but as it were he was actually a very _bad_ one. He couldn't conceal his despair as well as he might have wanted.

Her heart aches for him but her mind recoils, telling her to stay away, to keep her distance, and for once… she listens.

But at night, when her mind shuts down and it's all the desires of the heart that come out to play, she dreams. She may not remember them entirely when she wakes, but the remnants are all she needs.

The good and the bad, they're all about him.

 _Maybe one day… I'll remember._


	5. five

For natan week, day 5: distortion/clarity.

* * *

By all means, she shouldn't love him. Being with him has been endlessly dangerous for her, but she was endlessly reckless to match.

No matter what obstacles lay in front of them, she was ready to tackle them, as long as he was by her side. As long as she had something to believe in, to fight for, she was invincible.

Or, at least, she thought she was. Her frequent visits to the hospital had proved her wrong.

Her death had proved them both wrong.

But it's there, by the musty hotel bedside with her lifeless body, that his eyes are finally opened.

If he didn't know what he wanted before, he does now, it's all laid out before him in limp hair and closed eyes and cold skin.

He wants _her._ He wants her alive and by his side. He wants her smiles and her laughter and he'll even take her tears as long as she's _alive._ There is nothing in this world or the next he wouldn't give up to bring her back.

He feels it in the throbbing, burning gashes on his back as he lays in a pool of his own oozing blood, waiting for her to wake up. There's sorrow for his loss, but there's no regret.

He'd give them up again if it meant watching her eyes open once more, and if he wasn't already on the ground his knees would have given out in relief.

And it's there, on the hard warehouse floor with her alive and well, that he's uncomfortably acquainted with shitshow that was their relationship.

By all means, she shouldn't love him. She died because of him. But she does, and he loves her back, and he would go to the ends of the earth to keep her with him.

It's insane, by all accounts, but he's never seen so clearly before her.

With everything on the line, he would choose her. Every time.


	6. six

For natan week, day 6: future/past.

* * *

"What are you doing out here?"

If the sleepy drawl from behind him didn't bring him back to reality, the cool hands wrapping around his middle sure did, her icy fingertips shocking the life back into him.

"Jesus, kid. Put some gloves on or invest in some hot hands," he said, craning his neck to look back at her form pressed solidly against his back. He felt her lips curve against his skin.

"Why would I do something silly like that when I have my own space heater right here?" He snorted, straightening out again.

"I should start charging."

It was Natalie's turn to laugh, drowsy though it was, and she rested her chin against him to look up at the back of his head.

"You can't keep calling me kid when we're about to have one, y'know. Save some nicknames for the little one."

"Don't worry, I still have plenty in reserve for it," he said, then abruptly yanked away from her with a growl when she pinched the skin at his side. "What the fuck was that for?"

"Our baby is not an _it_ ," she protested, though the mirth in her eyes belied her indignance. At his eye roll, she lifted her hands, mimicking claws with her fingers.

"What would you prefer I call it—" at Natalie's glare, he changed gears, "—that thing—" slitted green eyes penetrated him, and he bared his teeth in mild annoyance, "—our _child_?"

"You could say _that_."

"Or not."

"You're a real piece of work, Lucifer." Though the words were cutting, there was nothing short of tired humor in her voice. He made another indifferent sound, and she stepped closer to him again, nestling herself against his chest.

His arms came up around her automatically, and she smiled.

"You never answered my question."

"What question?"

"What are you doing out here?"

"Nothing."

Natalie hummed, unconvinced, and waited expectantly. Lucifer rolled his eyes, knowing he'd never get any peace if he didn't give her an answer that satisfied her.

"I was just… thinking."

"About?"

"Does it really matter?" Natalie was silent for a moment, and if Lucifer didn't know better he would have thought she'd fallen back to asleep.

"Ah," was all she said after her long pause, and he felt his frustration spike. That was her knowing _ah_. No matter what he did, she had always been able to read him, even when he thought he was unreadable.

They had been together for years and it never failed to unnerve him, how good she was at it.

"Lucifer…"

"Don't."

"What? This is completely unrelated, I swear." She reached up, drawing her fingers in a quick cross over his heart, and he growled, snatching her hand away from him.

"You can't cross _my_ heart for _your_ swear," he snapped, and she giggled, but otherwise ignored him. Instead, she threaded her fingers through his and pulled them close to her, pressing her lips against his knuckles.

"It's no good to keep thinking about the past, you know."

"I wasn't—"

"Because doing that gives you like, nightmares and stuff. Stresses you out."

"I'm not—"

"Which is _why_ ," he felt her lips curve against his fingers and his words caught in his throat, "I've decided not to anymore."

"I—" he paused suddenly, his brows drawing down over his eyes. "...What?"

"Think about the past. I decided not to do it, unless it's for the good memories. There's no use in going over old mistakes. I can't change them, right? And everything turned out well enough."

He was silent for a long time, and Natalie tucked her head beneath his chin, closing her eyes. She made a good point. Rare for Natalie, and rarer still that she didn't use his vulnerability as a chance to tease him.

She was often better at reading his moods than he was, and more than he gave her credit for.

But as good of a point as she raised, it was hard to forget. She had amassed significantly less mistakes than he had in his long life, and none close to the level of his own. His sins had cost lives. They had cost him everyone and everything.

They haunted him and no matter how much he tried, he couldn't shake them.

"And," Natalie said, so softly that he felt the word exhaled against his collarbone more than heard it, "who's to say if I hadn't made the mistakes I did, I would be here, now? If you ask me, I would rather face all my regrets head on than be anywhere else."

Lucifer tensed at the admission, always surprised at the depth of her love for him and his for her. He had never thought he was even capable of it, but Natalie had a way of consistently proving him wrong.

He was suddenly acutely aware of the ring on his finger, of the warmth of her pressed against him, of the subtle swell of her stomach against the curve of his back.

Finally, he relaxed. She knew who and what he was, and she loved him and made a life with him anyways. A life he had never considered for himself but one he found himself enjoying nonetheless.

Because he had her. And she was right. There was too much for him to live for now, and he couldn't keep looking back when there was so much left ahead of them.

He dipped his head, to brush a kiss against her hair, and he felt her lips curve into a smile against his skin before she pulled back from him.

"Let's go back to bed."


End file.
